Toiling through the night to build a dream road

By Anoushka Sawhney

While travelling on the Roorkee road in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, you can see

huge machines and boards, with ‘Delhi-Meerut RRTS’ written on them. What

you can’t see are the men working behind these boards. They work round the

clock.

In March 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the

Delhi–Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System. It is an 82.15 km rail corridor

that connects Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut.

The service is to begin by 2025.

The roar of the machines ring your ears all day and night. The labourers can be

seen at work right through the night too.

Abhishek Kumar, head of the project, said, “We work in a 12-hour shift. The

first shift, which includes me, works till 8 at night and then comes the next

shift.”

A team of 15 people has been working relentlessly at this particular spot. When

the work finishes at one spot, the team moves forward to the next. The work has

been going on for two years.

The temperature drops to 9 degrees at night. “It is very cold, but we have to

work.”

If a worker falls ill and cannot make it to work, his predecessor works for 24

hours, said Kumar.

While the people of Meerut sleep with dreams of visiting Delhi in less than an

hour, these workers work tirelessly through the night in this harsh weather.